New-to-me articles, essays, blog posts, and so forth from the writing, reading, and publishing part of the Internet (or, if you prefer, interwebs).

Alayna Williams talks about Mining Old Fears in Fiction over at Ex Libris. “Every once in awhile, I think it’s good to go rooting around in the dirt of my fears for story fodder.”

The Rejectionist on adverbs – I’d pull a quote for the list, as I have the other links, but I don’t think I can do that without spoiling the whole post for you.

Francesca Forrester touches on traveling through space and narrative at the Apex Book Company’s blog: Faster Than Light. “But actually, when you think about it, dealing with the problem of time isn’t something that’s limited to space opera. It’s something all novelists and short-story writers face.”

At The Night Bazaar, John Hornor Jacobs has a few thoughts on structure in our stories. A Digression on Structure. “However, this three act three peak novel is a new iteration of the modern novel and has only become truly ubiquitous in the past twenty or so years. Film has informed literature, changed it, reshaped it. Possibly for the better, possibly for the worst.”

Late night thoughts on the impossible standards we put on female characters – Lindsay Goes to Hollywood. “ But I feel that this is another symptom of hypersensitivity; characters can’t just live and breathe naturally, if they’re female, no, they must be female first and character second, meaning that they have to serve their purpose in the GREATER CULTURE rather than their purpose in the story. “

And a companion to the above write-up on Female Characters from OCD, Vampires, and Rants, oh my! “It certainly doesn’t help any efforts to diversify if we’re too afraid to tackle these characters because of the inevitable backlash.”

Rachelle Gardener: Action is Character. “In real life, it’s not what a person says that shows us who they are. It’s what they do. The content of a person’s character is revealed in action and behavior. Who a person says they are, or thinks they are, doesn’t necessarily reflect their true character.”

Mary Robinette Kowal, in a guest post at the Apex Book Company Blog, talks about the origins of stories. “Finding Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” “Stories come from the strangest places. Way back in 2006, I was working as a puppeteer in Iceland on a television show called Lazytown. As part of a way to deal with the physical stress of the job, we had a massage once a week. It was a beautiful thing.”

SurLaLune Fairy Tales: “What is a fairy tale, anyway?” “ I am not going to give a neat, pat answer since I don’t think one exists. Scholars like to look for a pat definition to help control the large, living body of tales found all around the world.”

Carina Press: Things we don’t reject books for. “ Now, will we get aggravated if you don’t follow submission guidelines and you do some of the things mentioned? You bet we will. And aggravation is not always the best frame of mind you want in an editor. But none of these things will cause us to reject a manuscript.”

And the companion post from Carina Press: Reasons for rejection. “What I’m showing here is the ten themes repeated over and over in the rejection reports I received and I selected only a sampling of quotes to share, to give you insight into the editors’ thought process.”